The Internet of Things (IoT) generally refers to the devices and machines embedded with electronics and software enabling these devices and machines to exchange data over a network (e.g., the Internet). Narrowband IoT (NB-IoT) is a Low Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN) radio technology standard developed by 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP). NB-IoT has been designed to address use cases requiring low-throughput, high-delay tolerance, and low-power transmissions from a large number of deployed NB-IoT devices, including some battery powered NB-IoT devices. NB-IoT uses a subset of the frequency spectrum allocated to Long-Term Evolution (LTE), but is limited to a narrowband of 200 kHz.
NB-IoT may be implemented in three deployment modes, including a guard band mode, an in-band mode, and a standalone mode. Guard band mode uses bandwidth that is reserved in the guard band of an existing LTE network frequency spectrum. In-band mode uses a physical resource block in the LTE carrier of an existing LTE network frequency spectrum. Standalone mode uses a separate 200 kHz carrier outside of the existing LTE network frequency spectrum.